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Megacity/Urban Ops - tailored units?


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http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/preparing-general-purpose-forces-combat-megacities-how-conventional-units-can-best-train

I'm tracking the discussions in US MIL re future, megacity/elevated urban  fights, and designing a customized mech inf brigade level unit for same. 

I'm. Curious what fellow CM players do? I rarely use the bog standard TOE units - Esp. RUS/UKR. As them I like to get a think inf base and heavily augment with MGs, ATGM and snipers. MGs I find are inordinately effective at suppression in groups. GLs are useful but easily picked off and just annoy hostile IFVs. 

I find US standard inf units are pretty flexible. 

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I loved how they accurately (one assumes) predicted where future urban warfare will occur:

"Despite recent success against ISIS, fighting a near-peer enemy in megacities like... Los Angeles... would present greater and more dangerous risks to friendly forces that can only be avoided through innovations in our mission command architecture, our operating philosophies, and our tactics techniques and procedures."

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To addendum my unit build above, as UKR RUS I've often assigned a DP and AO w/ drones to MI platoons, with a dedicated 152mm battery and 2-3 target points along is axis if its my primary assault unit. 

I find mortars are not much use in dense, multi story fights - takes too long to pancake a strong point, if they can at all. Prefer to spend the rubles on a heavier system. 

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Obviously it depends on the map, but mortars can be pretty handy. Granted they're not as hard hitting as artillery, but the shells tend to drop straight down into streets, gardens and courtyards etc, while arty arcs into the surrounding buildings. So, not so good at smacking point targets, but helpful for isolating enemy positions, blocking routes etc.


Plus, if you take on-map mortars you can use the crews as infantry teams once they run out of bombs. Its always handy to have a few trucks too so you can bus troops around behind the lines.

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Good point re the trucks. 

Re mortars, yup, naturally true. Still, in the brutal arithmetic of QBs, I tend to go for Max Squared - most guns of the most Useful size. 

Speaking of this stuff, in game I've never noticed much if a difference between SPGs and Towed Howitzers, other than SPGs tend to be more accurate. 

Now, I'm not in any edumacated about artillery at all, so if any of the brighter lights around here want to illuminate me on the practical differences in-game I'd be all ears... 

Edited by kinophile
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On 5/17/2018 at 8:36 PM, kinophile said:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/preparing-general-purpose-forces-combat-megacities-how-conventional-units-can-best-train

I'm tracking the discussions in US MIL re future, megacity/elevated urban  fights, and designing a customized mech inf brigade level unit for same. 

I'm. Curious what fellow CM players do? I rarely use the bog standard TOE units - Esp. RUS/UKR. As them I like to get a think inf base and heavily augment with MGs, ATGM and snipers. MGs I find are inordinately effective at suppression in groups. GLs are useful but easily picked off and just annoy hostile IFVs. 

I find US standard inf units are pretty flexible. 

That was a dangerous article to read... So many links to other interesting articles with even more links!

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CM players tend to be reckless generals (I know I am). An urban operation that in the real world might be methodically be undertaken over the course of a day the player tries to get done inside of 20 minutes. Its hard to assess real world tactics when the virtual general throws his men into battle like kindling wood onto a fire  :o ;)

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This. 

CM scenarios can feel like sprints. Ive demo'd the WW2 titles before and it often feels like there's a residue in CMBS from those titles. 

Eg the distances/scales/unit numbers involved in CMBS  as n feel a little WW2 in their tightness and assumptions.

I dunno about you guys but I'm a fearful CMBS general. I hear the words Frontal Attack and I just see Slaughter From Unseen MBT.  

My objective is not to just save my pixeltruppens for the sake of saving them, but because CMBS accurate lethality is so much more brutal and FAST. I've seen WW2 inf platoons get hit by multi-tank fire in the open and successfullly retreat/race to cover. In CMBS that's a third/quarter of the company wiped out in 30s (thanks airbursts!) by a single MBT. 

So I'm cautious. I need time to spot or else I die, especially as I play almost exclusively UKR(and some RUS). I can win v  US, given a reasonable amount if time, but not if the clock forces me to rush/hurry in. Then US optics just ruin everything. 

My reasonable/minimum estimates as company+/battalion UKR/RUS v US are:

Village - 1. 5hour

Town - 3 hours

City district - 3-4 hours (I'd take 6 if I could have it) 

Open country - 2 - 3 hours

 

 

 

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On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 6:24 PM, MikeyD said:

CM players tend to be reckless generals (I know I am). An urban operation that in the real world might be methodically be undertaken over the course of a day the player tries to get done inside of 20 minutes. Its hard to assess real world tactics when the virtual general throws his men into battle like kindling wood onto a fire  :o ;)

You say this as if it's a bad thing. ;)

Bring me more kindling!!!

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Unfortunately, CMBS QB doesn't accurately represent Army doctrine. Typically, we wanted to enter a fight with a 3:1 ratio. It goes up when you add urban environment. Tackling a single 2 or 3 story structure requires/demands well over a platoon in personnel and assets. You need security elements, both inner and outer cordons, as well as a base of fire element, finally an assault element. I'll let you do the numbers, but it ends up being about a whole company. For one building.

Imagine a city block, or even an entire city. Operation Phantom was a primary example, though the doctrine changed quite a bit(and caused us to evolve) as a result of that battle. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

In QB, you really have to cut down the amount of forces the AI have. If you bring 4000pts of troops, they need to have about 700-1000. Might seem small, but if you were fighting conventional forces that you didn't have a similar ratio to, you would go around them or siege the hell out of them. CMBS doesn't do that.
 

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On the flipside though, the defenders can't fortify, booby-trap or generally prepare the battlefield like they can in the real world: no mousehole lines to fall back through, no buildings prepared for demolition, no using tunnels and sewers to get about, etc etc.
 

The more I play CM, the more I want an operational layer to inform the QBs and tie them together. I only want to make that decision to plunge into an urban area after the enemy's mobile forces have been destroyed and the defenders have been isolated, shelled and bombed for a few weeks.

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CM doesn't try to represent the peculiarities of siege warfare or occupation duties. But, then again, the coming CMRT module is supposed to bring the title up to VE day. Which implies brutal Berlin fighting. In Berlin the combat losses mirrored the carnage of us CM virtual generals. If a whole company manages to get decimated within 10 minutes 'welcome to Berlin'.

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1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

CM doesn't try to represent the peculiarities of siege warfare or occupation duties. But, then again, the coming CMRT module is supposed to bring the title up to VE day. Which implies brutal Berlin fighting. In Berlin the combat losses mirrored the carnage of us CM virtual generals. If a whole company manages to get decimated within 10 minutes 'welcome to Berlin'.

I can't wait to see those Berlin maps.

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